


Just How It Was

by kosmonauttihai



Category: Naruto
Genre: AU about basically anything after chapter 699, Agender Gaara, Genderfluid Uzumaki Naruto, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Past Canonical Child Abuse/Neglect, the hero staying disabled is not incompatible with a happy ending thanks for coming to my ted talk, written in second person but not a reader insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosmonauttihai/pseuds/kosmonauttihai
Summary: You know how you often don't realize how bad something you went through was until you've gotten out of the situation, and especially when thinking about the same happening to someone else?





	Just How It Was

You get home after a long but productive day at work, and suddenly, today, you realize the step from the tiles where you leave your shoes used to be tricky to climb. You smile at the thought in passing, but it follows you inside.  
  
You still live in the same small, shabby apartment you grew up in, at least when you're in this village and not in your future spouse's (you kind of think of them as your spouse already, though you're 'only' engaged, and you'll probably propose to each other all over again when the time for planning a wedding starts getting closer, because you were sixteen and in the middle of a war, but you can't imagine ever changing your mind about wanting to share your life with them, and you've had no reason to believe they would, either). Not quite as small anymore, and you own it now, along with the next one over that you've connected to this one so now you have an actual living room along with two other bedrooms. Not as shabby, either, if you say so yourself, and you've kept it as well as you've learned to. It's home, and it's got some good memories.  
  
This is the home you've brought friends over to when you started having those. This is the home your friends started visiting you at of their own accord.  
  
It was your first shared home with Gaara, even before you started dating, when they caught you sneaking out of your hospital room to sleep in your own bed already and followed, and you invited them to stay. You'd meant for the rest of the night, or maybe the next day, but neither of you minded in the least that it ended up being for three months. You made a pretty responsible pair of roommates considering you were twelve—well, you turned thirteen during that time, had your first birthday party, no less—but you were both used to looking after yourselves.  
  
It was here, one night when you couldn't sleep either, that they told you they don't mind being thought of as a boy, especially if it's out of only two options because they'd known the other doesn't fit them for about as long as they'd known about people being different genders, but, that they aren't. You've replaced the now too short mirror you stood in front of—trying to see it in you without transforming into what you had thought was expected in order to qualify, and deciding maybe you do—after you told them you sometimes feel like that, too, and sometimes you kind of wish you were, you know, a girl, and they asked you then why couldn't you, at those times, just be a girl. It was here, years later, that you first told them it's okay to introduce you as their girlfriend that day.  
  
You have replaced and changed a lot about the apartment. The bedside table where you put your laptop is still the same it was when you moved in, even if the bed isn't because you outgrew that, too.  
  
A Hokage—which you are now training to be, and not just physically—could afford a house, a big one. You'll get one one day, when the time is right. Himawari is happy to stay with you and Gaara whenever she does and you love her so much, but she's grown up with the estate of her clan as her primary home for more reasons than just that you're not actually her legal guardian and weren't even out of your teens yet when she became your daughter. That is, when she became Hinata's adopted sister instead of you-don't-remember-the-number-th cousin, because war is like that, too, and basically all your friends unofficially adopted her, too, because she was the first baby any of you had. But especially you. When the child you'd stayed up all night to help your friend look after while she'd been sick picked _you_ as the first person to call 'papa', _or_ 'mama' (she's called you that, or 'mom', too, since then, and sometimes she calls Hinata that as well), you took it as being adopted right back, and what promises you make, you keep. You believe every kid should have someone they can count on to be a parent to them, and Hiashi was still figuring out how to _not_ go about being one. Where were you going with this, again? Oh, right. The apartment is fine for her to visit, and she has her own room here for when she does, but this isn't where you want to raise a child who has no home to go to but one you can provide.  
  
You stop in the middle of putting your work clothes in the wardrobe. The thought catches up to you.  
  
You look around you. The bedroom is small, but it used to feel like a long way to cross it. You used to put a box next to your bed to get to it easier before you got agile enough you started jumping onto it like you thought a ninja would—and then stopped, when you got big enough you broke it by doing that, but you fixed it, by yourself. You've fixed a lot of things in this apartment.  
  
You've fixed the balcony a couple of times, to make it sturdier, because you used to be really light. At some point when you got taller you added the railings. Falling off it is no problem for you now, of course, you can land safely from a much longer fall. Hell, you can _fly_. You can teleport. You used to not even be able to run up a wall, and you've had a kid here since then who can't, either, so you asked captain Yamato to help you make it safe enough to let your daughter onto.

You like your old posters. You were really happy with the noodle one when you got it—you love ramen, so why not put up a picture of it! You couldn't believe your luck that you got it for free. Old man Teuchi said it was for his best customer of the day, though you suspect now that you're older he might have been about to throw it away if you hadn't asked to have it it, and said that to cheer you up. A good find all the same, you didn't have a lot of money for decorating. And you do love ramen, apparently it might be a trait passed down from your mother no less, but of course a factor in that you sought out a ramen shop to eat at so often and regularly went days on nothing but the instant version was that you didn't have a lot of money for food, either.  
  
There's still one of your old t-shirts from when you were... six, you think, hanging in the wardrobe. You were happy with the clothes you got, but sometimes you needed to make them your own. Your hands still had paint flecks on them when you went to bed that night, but you were really proud of those spirals. You don't remember where you got the paint that time, but you did keep finding ways to get your hands on some later when you stopped waiting for people to notice you. You question now how safe was it to handle. At least you were fine, so no harm done.  
  
You go start on dinner. Gaara should be done at the office soon, as well. They'll probably stop by the store on the way; you talked about being short on a few things in the morning. You really did eat nothing but instant ramen some days, huh? Delicious, and no one was telling you not to, sure, but you're pushing thirty now and you're a parent—'nutrition' is actually part of your vocabulary. What did your body even use to grow, as much as you were a relatively short and small kid well into your teens anyway. You wonder if it wasn't by coincidence, now, and why it hasn't occurred to you before it might not have been. It's just how it was. You didn't think about it, beyond training hard so you would grow up to be big and strong enough to be considered for Hokage.  
  
You're still getting used to your prosthesis, but you can handle most of the delicate work required in cooking, and getting stuff from the cupboard shelves. Kankuro and Sakura have talked about letting you try a new version soon, each a prototype for what they're going for. Using puppeteering technique to move artificial limbs is nothing new, but getting them to obey the will of someone not trained in the arts of puppeteering, and without needing someone who _is_ to help establish that connection every time you put it back on, has been a work in progress.  
  
Sakura keeps busy these days with research for the hospital and working alongside you at learning to run the village, on top of recently becoming a mother herself. You're going to be a Hokage, not _the_ Hokage, and you couldn't be happier to share the position, you two have always made a good team. It also keeps from having the work consume too much of one person's life—how well could someone run a community if they have no time to experience being part of it, after all? People have friends and families, those are important, too. Though Sakura's kid has three moms, so the chances of coming home from school to an empty house will be low there anyway.  
  
You knock a cup over with your fancy experimental arm, but it's nothing a bit of wiping the table surface won't fix. It's frustrating, sometimes, but you've dealt with worse clumsiness in this kitchen. You've cooked in this kitchen since you could barely reach the countertops, after all. You remember balancing on your tiptoes, trying to lift an electric kettle that felt so heavy then, to pour the boiling water in your ramen cup, and...  
  
And you didn't think about how your burns healed as you watched, leaving your skin looking like nothing had happened. It's a good thing you had Kurama, not that you knew that then. You're not sure how long it would have taken for someone else to come check on you or if you would have known what to do on your own. That's just how it was. At least you were fine.  
  
You leave the cooking, for now, and think you might need to sit down.  
  
After a moment you go back to the bedroom, and open the files from work today on your laptop. You and Sakura were thorough with them, you know that, and it's modeled after what Gaara has already been successfully doing at Suna, but you want to make sure you didn't miss anything in the version you got approval for today. You know how easy it is to have blind spots. You have been a person-shaped one.

 

* * *

 

You get home after a long but productive day at work, ready to greet your spouse and ask about their day. You remind yourself you are not actually married yet, but it feels like a technicality. Naruto is who you want as your partner in life, their daughter is your first child, and the three of you are a family—a loving, if not an especially conventional, one. That is exactly how you want it to be.

You open the door to your bedroom, already asking, when you glimpse them sitting on the bed, "How did it go?"

You stop, take in their slumped posture and tears, and think that might be your answer. "Oh." You forgo hanging up your robes and move to join them.

They turn to you when you sit, but say, "No, it was fine. Granny Tsunade said it's a good plan, it's gonna happen."

The proposal for a more effective child protective services network, particularly foster care and adoption this time, is open on the laptop on the table, with a piece of paper and handwritten notes in front of it. The plain text file also on the screen seems to continue where the paper and pencil proved too slow, with two hands neither of which is quite sure how to do the things that previously only the right hand that is no longer there learned how to do.

Naruto waves an arm (it's the prosthetic one, and that the choice comes naturally is a good sign). "It's just..." The gesture indicates nothing in particular about the surroundings, physically, but seems to encompass the entire apartment. And it does, in what it is other than a physical place. "...you know."

You do.

The screen going dark from a moment of inactivity puts what it is you can do about it now out of sight.

You open your arms, and do what it is you can do about it now for each other.


End file.
